Thursday, January 21, 2010

All sorts of things interfering with blogging. This week included a trip to New York for preparations for our upcoming workshop of Musto & Campbells Inspector opera. And the little remaining office time was clouded by fumbling attempts at writing marketing copy for our 2010 shows. (You'd think that struggling with Twitter would have given me some practice at being simultaneously clear, intriguing, detailed, and entertaining in 140 characters. But it seems to have just made me dumb and inarticulate.)

The other clog comes from struggling to write a post on the recent Pro-Am discussion that's been going on at various places on the interwebs. I'm fascinated by this subject, and I'm of at least three different minds on it. I have written and rewritten a blog post on it so many times that I could've filed a dissertation by now. Sadly, little of it is coherent.

So, if it intrigues you, here's the pertinent linkage. Take a few minutes to read and discuss, and I promise I'll be back shortly with some sort of take on it!

The Mission Paradox on Creating ScarcityOn one hand it is easier then ever for work to be created and if you believe (like I do) that a world with more art is a good thing . . . then that's a good thing. On the other hand, this incredible increase in both the number of artistic producers and the amount of artistic content has made it much more difficult for any individual artist to make a living through their art.

Butts in the Seats on Outsourcing Creativity to the Rich...as people acquire competence and are willing to perform a task for less money, or have the resources where they don’t care about their losses, starving artists ended up starving more.

Create Equity on Arts and SustainabilityIf the only way to earn money is through exposure, and the only way to get exposure is to spend thousands of hours making (and marketing) art that you could otherwise spend earning money, the people who need to earn money now are at a major, perhaps definitive, disadvantage. As a result, over time, you would expect to see more and more people who were lucky enough to have a cushion early in their careers (if not on an ongoing basis) persist to become professional artists, and fewer and fewer who have had to do it completely on their own.

January is Alumni Month
I love productions that contain a critical mass of Trappers. Last summer's Huguenots at Bard Summerscape came up in a conversation yesterday. 7 alums, representing two decades of WTOC excellence :)

Marguerite de Valois: Erin Morley

Valentine: Alexandra Deshorties

Urbain: Marie Lenormand

Count de Nevers: Andrew Schroeder

Marcel: Peter Volpe

Count de Saint-Bris: John Marcus Bindel

Tavannes: Jason Ferrante

And, in the Canadian Opera Company's announcement of their 2010-2011 season, we discovered this fabulous pairing in Cenerentola!